NOTES for Isa 29:13-23

The fear of the Lord is not horror at sensing danger. It is a feeling of one's own unworthiness. A feeling that it is impossible to stand in Christ's love. A feeling of shame and smallness, of one's own pettiness. A feeling of guilt and a desire for the self to be destroyed. Precisely destroyed as the kind of people we see ourselves to be at the moment of meeting Christ.

It is a silent prayer for us to be changed. It is an almost physical pain, like the loss of someone beloved. We understand that only our shell, our mind, our character, separates us from Christ. That we cannot change right now. We are held by the feeling that it is impossible to set anything right.

And in this fear, silence visits us. Peace visits us, and an even greater fear. A fear as though we have grown weak, cannot walk or speak, and are not responsible for ourselves. But this fear is fleeting. Because we understand that we are being held, that He is near. That we are being lifted from our knees.

And firmness and joy are born in the soul. Christ is our hope. He will destroy the offender in us, He will wipe away our pettiness, He will forgive our chatter and self-love, He will untangle the knots of our fear. He will raise us on the day of His coming in Power and Glory.

When the Pharisees and scribes reproach Christ because His disciples do not observe the ancient rites (Matt. 15:1-20), He quotes the first verse of today's reading from the prophet Isaiah: "This people draws near to Me with their mouth, and honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me." For the Pharisees, who knew Sacred Scripture well, these words sound like a severe rebuke: they immediately remember the continuation of the prophet's words, which the evangelists did not include in their account. And the prophet says: "and their fear of Me is a commandment of men learned by rote." This is the whole point: instead of reverence before God, we can transfer our reverent attitude to what people think about Him, and these are far from the same thing.

Meanwhile, the continuation of the Lord's words is striking. It is important to pay attention to this prophecy of Isaiah already because it will give us the opportunity to understand Christ better. The Lord says through the prophet that His people, instead of worshiping with the heart, worshiping in Spirit and truth, honor Him with their lips and prefer human limitation. Our instinct then expects a warning about the severe punishment that will overtake people for such a substitution. But the Lord says: "in a very little while... the deaf shall hear... and the eyes of the blind shall see..." He says that He will redeem Abraham, and his descendants will revere the God of Jacob. In the Lord's eyes, what matters is that He Himself will correct our errors, that we will be able to draw near to Him with the heart. Therefore this whole word is a prophecy about Christ.

Let us imagine the historical context of this prophecy. Assyria attacked the Northern Kingdom of Israel and destroyed it, carrying the people into captivity. An Assyrian attack threatens the Southern Kingdom, where Isaiah lives. And the prophet reminds them that the fate of the people is determined by their trust in God, by keeping the covenant through which God promises His protection, and by obedience to the Lord's commandments. The choice to be made is between blessing and curse, between life and death.